“We are right to enjoy music in the moment, and to give in to it fully as an emotional experience. But when we resist analysis after the fact, we commit the same fallacy as the solipsist: we fall into subjectivism, small-mindedness, bias, and unnecessary ignorance.”

I have never understood the concept that understanding something lessens our enjoyment of it. It's a concept I hear all the time with regards to science: Why can't we just leave well enough alone, why must we destroy the beauty of the world? But which is more beautiful--a mountain you see and forget, or a mountain you UNDERSTAND, where the veil of time drops from your eyes and you see the birth of the mountain in the violent upthrust of rock as the Earth rips itself apart over the course of eons? Where those who resist analysis have only walked on desert scrubland, I have walked on ancient lakes and swam in seas that died before the dinosaurs were born. Where others see an inconvenient rain shower I see the birth of an entire landscape. There's no contest.

Further, analyzing art makes it last longer and hit deeper. A typical song most people listen to lasts 3 to 5 minutes. That's a pretty short time. However, if you analyze the song--ie, if you think about it--it can stay with you for days, weeks, even years in some cases. A single song can alter the entire course of your lifetime. Listening to a song but not analyzing it is akin to a one-night stand: fun, perhaps, but ultimately meaningless. Thinking about the song is romance.